Flashback
"Find an anthill near your apartment—the closer, the better. Dig it up carefully and collect the ants in a glass bottle. If possible, include a leaf from a black locust tree. Then..."
Charlize paused mid-read, raising an eyebrow at the bizarre instructions.
It sounded less like a supernatural ritual and more like something from a third-grade science project.
For a moment, she wondered if Christian had once been a teacher who lost his mind in the occult section of a library.
But being possessed by a ghost had lowered her threshold for weird.
She grumbled but complied. Finding an anthill in downtown Los Angeles wasn't easy.
At least ants weren't repulsive. If he'd asked for termites, cockroaches, or those giant marching ants from the desert…
She shook the thought away and retrieved the bottle she'd prepared. The soil inside crawled with tiny black ants, industrious and restless.
On a whim, she'd added a sugar cube and a leaf she'd found on a walk. Now they were hauling sugar like miniature weightlifters, seemingly content in their strange new prison.
"Good," Christian muttered, inspecting the bottle with approval.
"You know, locust leaves aren't exactly easy to come by," Charlize said, brushing hair from her face.
"That tree's rare around here. I nearly settled for a maple."
"You got it, didn't you?" Christian said without much interest, already unscrewing the cap.
He slipped a photograph—old, faded, and creased—into the bottle, burying it lightly beneath the soil.
"What are you doing?" she asked, frowning.
"Ants don't exorcise spirits."
"You haven't read enough," Christian replied, his tone dismissive, edged with that constant cigarette-wrecked rasp that made everything sound like he didn't care whether you understood.
Charlize crossed her arms.
"Then enlighten me, O Grumpy One."
Christian sighed, and for once, decided to play along.
"Old story. Western Europe, the Middle Ages.
A drunk stumbles into the woods and passes out under a locust tree.
In his dream, he lives a full life—gets married, raises kids, dies an old man. Then he wakes up. He's still lying in the dirt, minutes after he first blacked out. It turns out that there was an anthill beneath the tree. The legend says the ants built his dream—one memory per insect."
Charlize blinked. "Wait. Are you saying each ant... is like a tiny piece of a soul?"
"Close enough." Christian's expression darkened.
"The idea's not fiction. Some of these old tales hide scraps of real magic—buried in folklore so the Church wouldn't burn everyone alive."
She gave a short laugh. "So what, you think if I say 'Open Sesame,' a magic vault opens?"
Christian gave her a slow blink.
"Might. If you knew the right vault."
"Jesus."
She shook her head.
"You're full of crap."
"Probably," he said, deadpan.
"But this crap works."
He leaned closer to the bottle. The ants kept moving, circling the photograph like they were already part of something bigger.
Charlize watched, uneasy.
"Just be glad I didn't have you dig up termites or trap a beehive. Could've worked with them—anything with a hive mind. But ants are clean. Easy to manage."
Christian didn't say the rest. That the dead man—the one who taught him this spell—never mentioned termites or bees.
Just ants. Just the bottle. Just the dream.
He twisted the cap shut, sealing the insects and the photo inside, and placed it gently beside Charlize's bed.
"I've bound Alexis' spirit. Her real name and signature on the contract are enough to hold her for now. But it's not permanent. Ghosts... they don't stay quiet forever. So we take precautions. This bottle is one."
Charlize stared at the bottle. The ants kept moving, endlessly weaving through the dirt like they knew something she didn't.
"And if it doesn't work?" she asked.
Christian lit a cigarette with a flick of his Zippo and didn't answer right away.
The flame lit his face for a second—tired eyes, stubble, trench coat shadowed in the low light.
"Then we pray she doesn't remember how to scream."
Christian pointed at the glass bottle, where Alexis' picture lay buried in the soil, surrounded by the ant colony.
"We need to draw her into the dream," he said.
"Trap her inside, like the story I told you. She'll live out years in there, decades maybe. Eventually, she'll fade—burn herself out. It's like an exorcism, just... slower."
"Like a priest sending a spirit to heaven?" Charlize asked.
"Close," Christian said.
"It's a concept you'd recognize from Christianity. But remember—suicides don't get a first-class ticket upstairs, do they?"
"So she goes to hell?"
"Maybe. Maybe nowhere."
He leaned back, his voice as dry as ash.
"I don't buy into the whole heaven-and-hell travel brochure. Most souls don't qualify for either, if you ask me."
Charlize glanced at the bottle, uneasy.
"Still... if that's how it works, let God sort his own and Satan take the rest."
A flicker of amusement crossed Christian's face.
"Exactly. You're not invested in all this, and I respect that. But so that you know, this isn't about judgment. It's containment."
He ran a hand through his tangled hair, exhaling smoke through his nose.
"This kind of spell—what I'm doing—it's not just magic. It's architecture. Alexis isn't just being sealed away. I'm building a dream around her, a prison made of fantasy. And here's the twist—she'll power it herself, without ever knowing it. That's how deep the trap goes."
Charlize frowned. "You're using her... to fuel her dream?"
"Exactly. That's why I developed this plan. My power alone is not enough to cast something this big. So I need her hooked, invested, dreaming. If she thinks it's real and believes it, she sustains it. She builds her cage."
"That's clever," Charlize said.
"Also kind of messed up."
Christian gave a bitter smile.
"Of course it is. I lied to her. Told her she was auditioning for a lead role in some lost James Cameron project. 'Spider-Man,' of all things. Sold her a Hollywood dream."
Charlize raised an eyebrow. "Really?"
"For an actress, what better fantasy than landing the role of a lifetime?" Christian said.
"The fame, the awards, the whirlwind romance with some red-carpet Adonis—that's bait she'll chase forever."
"And I'm supposed to... what? Write her dreams?"
"Exactly." He pointed at the bottle again.
"Why do you think it's by your bed?"
Charlize stiffened. "Wait, hold on. I thought she wasn't in me anymore."
"She's not. Not directly. But a ghost like Alexis—she can't just free-float and dream. She needs a tether and a living mind nearby to generate the fantasy. That's you. You're not the host this time... you're the engine."
She stared at him. "So, I dream for her?"
"No. You create the world she dreams in. You plant the seeds. She's the one who'll wander through it, thinking it's all hers."
He met her eyes, voice low.
"You're the Dreamweaver, Charlize. She's the dreamer. And if you do your part—keep her enchanted, lost in her perfect little world—she'll never wake up. She'll live a full life there, and when it ends, so will she. Quietly. Painlessly. Finally."
Charlize looked at the glass bottle again. The ants never stopped moving. Neither did her thoughts.
"I don't know," she muttered.
"I feel like if I get involved, I'll just give her nightmares."
Christian exhaled smoke and shook his head.
"No, Charlize. Nightmares come from fear. What we're giving her is a wish. A lie beautiful enough to die in."
----
References-
Inception - Movie by Christopher Nolan (2010)